November Reading Recap

I was so busy reading books last month, I got behind on reviewing them until now!

→ CAHOKIA JAZZ by Francis Spufford: Detectives Barrow and Drummond of the Cahokia PD are called to the scene of a grisly murder. It's 1922, so most of their cases involve the illegal liquor trade, but this is something else. An eviscerated body has been left atop one of the city's highest buildings, with a message scrawled in Anopa, the local language that most Indigenous citizens speak along with English. Barrow isn't an Indigenous local, though he's often mistaken for one; he's a newcomer of uncertain heritage to this ancient kingdom on the Mississippi that's now part of the United States. Since Barrow is still learning Cahokia's customs and culture, he tends to let Drummond take the lead, even when his friend's policing strategies are corrupt. But this time, Barrow is compelled to look past the convenient suspects and figure out what's really happening with this case and its complicated repercussions.

I loved everything about this compelling detective story set in a brilliantly rendered alternate history. Cahokia was a real city that prospered centuries before European colonization, and Spufford has established a timeline in which it continued thriving. He puts enough of the worldbuilding details on the page that my curiosity was satisfied, but not so much that Barrow ever gets much chance to rest from the grueling pace of his investigations. Barrow is an excellent character, burdened by all the usual trappings of a noir detective and also grappling with who he wants to be in the world. This is a smart, complex, dark novel, and I highly recommend it.

→ THE TELLING by Ursula K. Le Guin: When Sutty was growing up, Earth was dominated by an oppressive religious regime. She couldn't wait to complete her training as an Ekumen Observer and leave for an assignment on another planet, where things would be different. But when she arrives on Aka, she finds it's another rigidly controlled society, this one stridently anti-religious. The Akan government, in pursuit of technological progress like that of Earth, has outlawed everything associated with the planet's once-widespread spiritual practices. Sutty wishes she could learn more about this situation, but she's granted little access to anything worth studying while she's confined to the city. Once permitted to leave, Sutty travels to a remote village and realizes the old ways are still a part of daily life, though kept hidden from government monitors. As she gains the trust of the villagers, she learns the traditions of the Telling and the history that brought Aka to this point.

As I continue to wander through Le Guin's extensive body of work, I'm particularly enjoying the stories that place characters in cultures they're unfamiliar with and delve into the anthropological details. I didn't know anything about THE TELLING when I started it, so I was pleased to discover it's firmly in this category. I was immediately drawn in to Sutty's story and happy to get to know her better as we learned together about Akan culture and history. This novel is so heavy on the anthropological details that I grew a bit impatient in the middle, but soon more plot developed, and I was enthralled again. It's interesting to read a story contrasting a society that demands religion with one that bans it, and Le Guin explores this with her usual nuance.

→ OREO by Fran Ross: Oreo begins before the birth of the title character, when her eventual parents, a Black woman and a Jewish man, announce their marriage. The news of the union is so upsetting to their own parents that one drops dead and another is rendered catatonic. The marriage doesn't last long, and soon Oreo's father is gone from her life, but he leaves behind a set of clues Oreo can find him with when she's older. Though Oreo and her younger brother are raised by the Black side of their family, they are exposed to a certain amount of Yiddish as a consequence of their (now immobilized) grandfather's extensive but spite-based knowledge of Judaism. After a childhood immersed in the various language eccentricities of her family members and tutors, the precocious Oreo sets off to New York City on a quest to find her father.

This novel was published in 1974 and largely ignored until decades later. I went in knowing only that it was a satire with a biracial protagonist, and the book was quite different from what I expected, and from anything else. While there is social commentary on race as well as gender, the most prominent feature is Ross's extensive, inventive use of wordplay. The puns and jokes and rhetorical devices draw on numerous languages and fields of reference. I was constantly amused, impressed, and looking things up. The broader humor of Oreo's adventures is, well, broad, and often too slapsticky or surreal for my taste, but the language jokes are magnificent. The quest's structure turns out to be based on a legend from Greek mythology, adding another unexpected, fascinating layer. I didn't always enjoy this as a story, but I appreciated its idiosyncrasies, and I'm glad I read it.

→ THE SEQUEL by Jean Hanff Korelitz is a sequel to THE PLOT. The plot of THE PLOT involves a writer who publishes a wildly successful novel based on a plot that originated with another writer, and consequently ends up in the middle of his own sinister plot. The plot of THE SEQUEL results from the events of THE PLOT, making it difficult to describe without revealing the plot turns of THE PLOT. Once again, THE SEQUEL involves a writer publishing a wildly successful novel, but the plot of that novel is less important to the plot than the plot of the novel from THE PLOT, which continues to have sinister consequences in the life of the new writer. You got all that?

This is a reasonably clever followup, but I found it far less fun than the original. What THE SEQUEL adds to the story is the new protagonist's perspective, which Korelitz brings to life with some complexity. However, the premise requires going back over much of the material from THE PLOT, so this novel lacks the freshness and surprise of the first one. The rehashing made my disbelief lose suspension, and some of the publishing insider stuff felt like unnecessary filler this time. I was also sorry that one of the plot twists hinges on sexual assault, a trope I'm very tired of. Read THE PLOT if you're looking for an entertaining, over-the-top thriller set in the literary world, but you may want to stop there.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ For Literary Hub, Jadie Stillwell and Nicole Blackwood attend a Nancy Drew convention and consider the mystery of the girl detective: "Even if Nancy can't be defined by her image, surely we can nail down a character logline. Sherlock Holmes is abrasive, Hercule Poirot is vain, Veronica Mars is prickly, and Nancy Drew is... the quintessential teen girl of her time, at all times. Yes, she was lovingly sculpted into being by Carolyn Keenes (Carolyns Keene?) and scores of illustrators, but she's also one publishing executive's idea of how an independent young woman might look and act, packaged for the masses and routed straight to a bookshelf near you—and your mom, and your mom's mom. It's true that most of Nancy's iterations share a few traits: cute blue roadster, loyal boyfriend, indulgent dad. But these are things she possesses, privileges she has; there's still frustratingly little to cement her as more than a concept."

Thanks A Lot

It's been another two months since I posted about the slow and steady progress I'd been making on my novel draft over the prior two months. Past Me, never able to avoid hubris, said "I have hopes about speeding up," and I am here to laugh ruefully and report that certainly wasn't the case. But I'm also here to issue some qualifications that Past Me neglected to mention, maybe because she didn't consult our shared calendar.

It's been a busy two months in the non-writing department, all for lovely and pre-planned reasons (the best kind of busy-ness). Both sets of my parents came to visit (during separate weeks), and I took two trips (during other weeks). It was all lovely, but it didn't leave a lot of room in the calendar for writing days, especially nice long strings of consecutive writing days. So the progress I've made in these two months is far less than the previous two, but the excellent news is that it's far more than zero!

Of course another thing that happened during this time is the election. I wrote a post in November 2016 that more or less covers anything I might have thought to say now, and then some. Past Me occasionally has some good insights.

Relatedly, I'm on Bluesky now, along with millions of other new users. Way back in the olden days, I used to love Twitter for the fun community I had there. Then the platform went through a series of changes that caused some people to leave, others of us to stick around uncertainly, and the whole thing to grow decidedly less fun. Now enough people are on Bluesky that it has at least some of the old Twitter feel. If you were never drawn to this style of social media, there may be no reason to add it to your life now, but if you're interested and have questions, I'm happy to help.

I'll try not to set up any novel progress expectations for Future Me with this update. Our calendar indicates it's almost the end of another year, and that means more breaks and distractions, and fewer writing days in the weeks ahead. It's also one of the common occasions for gratitude, and I have so much of that. I'm grateful for the time and opportunity I have to write, for family and friends and the time I get to spend with them, and for all the ways I'm fortunate. And I'm thankful to you, for reading!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Charlie Jane Anders considers whether and how to write for this terrible time: "So now I have to think about the meaning of Lessons in Magic and Disaster in this new context, and whether people will find it meaningful during such a dark time. I think the book does have something to say about the tug of war between living your dreams and healing your wounds. I think it speaks to our need for literature and poetry and the humanities generally, at a time when those things are under attack. And even though it is not a book about capital-p Politics, I think it is animated by a unquenchable thirst for queer liberation. It's definitely a book about building better families and learning to survive."

→ At Wired, Meghan Herbst profiles author Martha Wells: "Wells, who is 60 years old, has averaged almost a book a year for more than three decades, ranging from palace intrigues to excursions into distant worlds populated by shapeshifters. But until Murderbot, Wells tended to fly just under the radar."

October Reading Recap

I've been keeping my mind occupied this past month with plenty of reading!

→ THE GOD OF THE WOODS by Liz Moore: In 1975, at a summer camp in the Adirondacks, a camper goes missing. And Barbara isn't just any camper—she's the daughter of the wealthy family who has owned the camp for generations. Even worse, Barbara's parents lost their first child 14 years earlier, when he disappeared into the forest and was never found. As the search for Barbara begins, the narrative shifts between characters and times to connect earlier events of the summer with clues that surface. Soon the investigation reopens questions about the previous disappearance, the family, and the camp staff, introducing more time periods and perspectives.

This is a well-written and suspenseful mystery that kept me up late reading for many nights. I was as interested in getting to know the characters as I was in finding out the answers to the many questions raised. The story unfolds at an exciting pace, with information parceled out in a way that lets the reader form and test theories along with the investigators. If you like complex thrillers and can handle stories where children are in peril, I definitely recommend this.

→ THE SINGER'S GUN by Emily St. John Mandel opens in New York City with a federal agent investigating a mysterious phone call connected to women smuggled into the country in a shipping container. Her inquiries lead her to the parents of Anton Waker, a man who's gone missing and may be dead after last being seen on a Greek island. Earlier, Anton arrives on that island during his honeymoon, and he decides to stay there, alone. The wedding was postponed twice, so perhaps the marriage was doomed before it began, but Anton won't give his new wife a clear explanation for why he isn't returning to New York with her. There's a lot Anton hasn't explained, including that his job has recently unraveled, his background isn't what he claimed, and his whole family's history is shady and criminal.

I really liked this story and the way it unfolds. There's a mystery established at the start, but much of the mystery is what's even going on, and while certain pieces soon become clearer, others take longer to expose. Anton is hiding a great deal, and so are all the other characters, giving them each a different sense of the big picture. As in every Mandel novel (this is her second), frequent shifts in time and perspective are used to good effect in assembling the pieces. The characters are rendered in full and specific detail (also what I expect from Mandel), and the plot becomes more tense with each new development. I was captivated all the way through.

→ GENDER QUEER is a graphic memoir by Maia Kobabe about the process of figuring out eir gender and sexuality. Kobabe starts with episodes from eir childhood that first introduced em to society's different expectations for girls and boys. Growing up as a girl, e often felt ignorant of these rules and wished to opt out. Adolescence brought more confusion as e developed crushes that weren't limited by gender, but was always most turned on by gay male fantasies and fanfiction. As a young adult, Kobabe tried out different relationships and identities before settling into understanding emself as nonbinary and asexual.

I found this an effective and affecting story that makes great use of the comics form. Kobabe's panels are a pleasure to look at, easy to follow, and often visually witty. I was especially impressed by eir ability to draw nuanced facial expressions with so few lines. Through the combination of art and text, Kobabe reveals deeply intimate thoughts that are sometimes painful, sometimes joyous. It's a beautiful portrait of one personal journey that may also help readers better see themselves or their loved ones.

→ SHANGHAILANDERS by Juli Min: In 2040, the Yang family is coming apart, literally and figuratively, as some members stay at home in Shanghai and others fly off to distant countries. After a quarter century of marriage, Leo and Eko are both wondering if they still have a future together. Their three daughters are growing into young women, all with big problems their parents are unaware of. After an introduction to the family, each chapter takes a step back in time, offering glimpses of earlier and earlier events and expanding the set of secrets.

This is one of those books where I enjoyed the individual pieces more than the whole. I was intrigued by the stories presented by each new chapter and point of view, and I wished they were more tightly connected beyond revolving around the same family. Though the backward structure seems designed to answer questions about the past raised by later events, most referenced situations never appeared again, and that left me unsatisfied. For example, two of the strongest chapters focus on staff members employed by the Yangs, and it felt like a missed opportunity to not see them through the family's eyes at a different time. Min is a talented writer of characters and scenes, but this didn't come together for me.

→ THE FAR REACHES: STORIES TO TAKE YOU OUT OF THIS WORLD is a collection of six original stories (published by Amazon and exclusive to their platforms) by well-known science fiction authors. I was already a fan of some of these writers, and others were familiar names who I'd never read and wanted to try. I enjoyed the collection overall and each story individually, though I wanted more from some of them.

All the stories involve space travel, usually beyond the solar system, so many deal with broad sweeps of time. In "How It Unfolds" by James S. A. Corey, characters from Earth are scanned and beamed as information to distant planets where they might reestablish human civilization. The details set up a fascinating premise at a vast scale, while the story focuses on individual character relationships. "Slow Time Between the Stars" by John Scalzi also involves a long-range search for habitable planets, but the narrator is a solitary intelligent spaceship who spends its slow time musing about its mission.

In "Void" by Veronica Roth, the crew of an interstellar ship has to live outside of normal human time, barely aging on their journeys while decades pass at their destinations. That story is a murder mystery that makes satisfying use of the time dilation. The characters in "Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach" by Nnedi Okorafor are selected for solo space travel, each tasked with roaming the solar system alone for ten years, but they get to meet up for one week of intense human connection.

"The Long Game" by Ann Leckie is narrated by an alien life form interacting with humans. Leckie is always great at imagining alien minds, and this intriguing story is no exception. Aliens also feature in "Falling Bodies" by Rebecca Roanhorse, a bleak story about a human who was adopted by a colonizing species and grew up uncertain about where his allegiance should lie.

September Reading Recap

Once again, my reading adventures led me through a fascinating variety of novels:

→ CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: In the near future, the United States prison system takes inmate exploitation to a whole new level by introducing gladiatorial combat. Prisoners convicted of violent crimes can enroll in the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment program and fight one another to the death before live and televised audiences. For as long as they remain alive, fighters become celebrities, with their lives recorded and broadcast to fans who dissect the between-match dramas among the different Chain-Gangs. Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are two of the biggest stars, and both the romance between the two women and the way they run their Chain is legendary. Thurwar has survived almost three years, and if she wins just a few more matches, she'll be granted freedom from this gruesome life where killing is better than the alternative.

The novel starts out intense and disturbing by detailing several matches, and I wasn't sure how to feel about what I was reading. But as I read a little farther, I got a better grasp on the concept, and the characters drew me in. The premise of this dystopian future prison system is horrific. So is much about the current prison system. Adjei-Brenyah explores these real and invented horrors with nuance by shifting among characters with different relationships to the system and throwing in occasional pointed footnotes.

Because the characters have been led to glorify violence, the writing often does as well, making the readers part of the audience invested in every moment of these lethal matches. Enough time is spent outside of the arena that the story isn't nonstop brutality, and I was also invested in and moved by the characters and their bonds. This novel successfully pulls off a number of difficult moves. It will make you uncomfortable, and I recommend it.

→ FIGHT NIGHT by Miriam Toews: Swiv was expelled from school, so she spends her days at home with her grandmother. Grandma conducts a form of homeschooling that involves talking about death, occasional math problems, and the letter-writing assignments suggested by the family's therapist. When Swiv's mom comes home every evening, she's always tired and ranting about something. Mom is pregnant with a fetus the family calls Gord, who Swiv often worries about. She doesn't know where her dad has disappeared to, and she isn't sure whether the adults know or are just as in the dark about why their family has fallen apart.

This novel is all about Swiv's unique and hilarious narrative voice. Not a lot happens for much of the story besides Swiv coping with the daily realities of her family. As a young child surrounded by adults, she's the focus of their love and attention, but they also have other concerns she doesn't always understand. The characters' lives have been shaped by mental health problems and loss, and some of that history is eventually revealed to the reader, but more is left unexplained than I anticipated. I laughed and laughed through this unusual, darkly funny story, and then I cried a little. I loved the whole experience.

→ LOKA by S.B. Divya: Akshaya doesn't want the life her parents have planned for her, and genetically designed her for, on the planet Meru. After a childhood spent in space travel, Aks will be making her first visit to Earth, and though she's never set foot there, she's convinced it's where she wants to spend the rest of her life. (She's sixteen, and full of convictions.) In order to really experience the home of humanity, Aks and her best friend set out on an ambitious journey to circumnavigate Earth, under a specific set of constraints. They're undertaking the Anthro Challenge, a commitment to only using human-era technology and accepting no help from alloys, the genetically advanced descendants of humans. Since most humans are content to let alloys manage everything and are suspicious of any form of ambition, this endeavor will be not just a grueling physical trial but a challenge to win understanding and acceptance.

LOKA continues The Alloy Era series by moving into the next generation, but it's a very different sort of story than MERU, and either book could be read alone. I preferred the first novel, which had a wider scope and took the characters around the galaxy. By contrast, this one that focused on Earth felt more limited, and I didn't find the premise or characters as compelling. I still enjoyed following Aks on her adventure and was caught up in the exciting and emotional journey. I'm eager to see what's next for this series and will check out whatever Divya writes!

→ ENTITLEMENT by Rumaan Alam: Brooke is excited about her new job at the foundation of billionaire Asher Jaffee, who has pledged to give away his fortune. She spent some years as a teacher but didn't have the necessary passion, so she's enjoying the relative ease and comfort of the office work while still doing good in the world. Asher, at 83, is uninterested in retirement and likes to stay involved in his charity. He's intrigued by the new Black hire and the connection she might provide to the souls who most need saving. Asher takes Brooke on as his protégé, removing her from the project she's been assigned and giving her free rein to find the causes that interest her most. Brooke slips easily into her expanded role, happily filing expense reports and using the car service for whatever she needs. Before long, she starts to wonder whether her own life might be be as worthy as any other cause.

There is so much that's great about this premise, and so much potential in Brooke's developing sense of entitlement. But I was disappointed by the story's slow pace, and unsatisfied by the plot. The characters are fascinating, and as always, Alam writes with insight and nuance about people trying to connect across the borders of class and race. I remain a fan of his writing, but I hoped for something more from this novel.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Leigh Stein considers the claim that there are only 20,000 readers of literary fiction: "All I can offer in my defense is that I read that number (20,000) in a review in July and it stuck in my memory because it sounds true. It might not be accurate, and I would love to see real data on this, but I've worked in the publishing industry since 2008. I've sold six books. I know first-hand how hard it is to sell literary fiction—and by sell I mean both to a publisher and to readers." (Thanks, Book Riot!)

Slow and Steady

My actual writing of a decent draft of this novel continues. I planned to say "continues apace," which I thought meant "at a constant pace," and then I would clarify that while the pace is constant, it's quite slow. But I've learned that "apace" means "swiftly," so now instead you get a glimpse inside my writing process, where I pay close attention to choosing each word. And now you have some idea why it takes so long.

I began this draft about two months ago, and I'm still generally enjoying turning my plans into prose. I'm making a lot of changes from the outline as I go, but mostly at a level that only affects a scene or two. Sometimes the work feels like solving a fun puzzle as I figure out which pieces fit best where. Sometimes a cool new detail occurs to me while I'm in the middle of a paragraph—or when I'm walking down the street or taking a shower. Other times, I can't understand why I'm still in the middle of the same paragraph as an hour ago.

After two months, I'm perhaps one-tenth of the way through the novel. That's an exciting amount of progress! It's also so much less than I wished for. My dreams of writing this draft in six months are long gone. Even a year seems ruled out by the reality of the math, though with my eternally unrealistic optimism, I have hopes about speeding up.

But things take as long as they take, or so I've heard. I'm writing right along, continuing at my pace, and we'll be there when we get there.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Rebecca Onion at Slate interviews Emily St. John Mandel about Station Eleven, 10 Years Later: "One thing that doesn't ring true to me about the book anymore isn't necessarily something I got wrong, but just the way our country has changed. When I wrote the book, I wrote a scene where all these flights are diverted to the nearest airport and everybody gets off the plane. They go to a television monitor tuned to CNN or something, and the announcer is talking about this new pandemic and everybody believes what the announcer is saying, which—I swear to God, that was plausible in 2011. At this point, absolutely not. I can't even imagine that happening."

August Reading Recap

I had another great month of reading all sorts of books!

→ THE MINISTRY OF TIME by Kaliane Bradley: After the British government discovers time travel, a newly formed Ministry decides to test for safety by pulling a few individuals out of the past when they're on the brink of certain death, so their removal won't alter any timelines. Each "expat," as the unwilling time travelers are called, is assigned to live with a ministry agent called a "bridge" who will help them adjust to modern London while watching for any signs of physical or psychological deterioration. The novel's unnamed narrator is the bridge for a (real) Royal Navy explorer, Commander Graham Gore, taken in 1847 from a doomed Arctic expedition. The bridge finds her new housemate charming and quicker to acclimate to the twenty-first century than some of the other expats, and their cohabitation goes well, despite his reservations about living with an unmarried woman. But as she delivers her reports to the Ministry and carries out her duties, she starts to suspect there is more to the time travel project than the bridges have been told.

This novel starts off fun and mostly light-hearted, focusing on the amusing antics of Gore learning about the modern world and the bridge's increasing attraction to him. But the plot soon becomes more complicated, darker, and unpredictable. I really liked the story in both modes, and the way all the pieces worked together. Bradley fully imagines every character and writes Gore and the other expats with reactions and manners of speech that match their eras. The writing is funny and clever, the story unfolds in a satisfying way, and the book was a pleasure to read.

→ SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A PARENT by S. Bear Bergman, illustrated by Saul Freedman-Lawson: The subtitle to this book of advice promises "A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I've Learned About Parenting, Mostly the Hard Way," and from the first page, Bergman is humble and honest about those difficult lessons. "I was a perfect parent before I had actual children," he writes, in an opening chapter that goes on to describe the contrast between his tidy imaginary children and the chaotic real ones. Freedman-Lawson's delightful and detailed illustrations bring both versions to life and establish the visual language of the guide. From then on, it's always clear Bergman is drawing on his real life experiences and has put great thought into deriving lessons that might be useful for other parents.

The guide covers a range of topics, from everyday matters like getting everyone out of the house on time to weighty issues such as bullying. There's advice on introducing kids to new foods, and on introducing them to the concepts of diversity and differences between people. One lovely chapter offers the idea of replacing family trees with family gardens, presenting many possible ways to make use of this metaphor. For anyone who's part of a child's garden, I heartily recommend this book.

Check out photos of a few sample pages here. And to every flavor of human, I also recommend Bergman and Freedman-Lawson's first collaboration, SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A HUMAN.

→ DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver: Damon is born to an addict mother in a trailer home in the southwestern Virginia mountains. Though he soon acquires the nickname Demon, he's actually a good kid who helps his mother keep her act together after she gets clean. His best friend is part of the kind family next door who provide a second home for Demon, and despite a rocky start, his early life is pretty good. But when Demon's mom marries a hateful, abusive man, there's only so much the neighbors can do, and soon Demon is shunted into a terrible foster situation where he's used as free labor on a tobacco farm. From there, Demon's childhood is a string of miseries, until he finds his way back to some happiness—for a while. More tragedies lie ahead, but Demon remains a good kid with people who care about him, and he'll make it through.

Demon narrates his story with a voice that's vibrant, funny, and insightful about both his childhood thoughts and the adult perspective he's writing from. Kingsolver's masterful handling of the narration kept me absorbed in the novel for many hundreds of pages, and while I do think some episodes could have been trimmed, my attention rarely flagged. I was always caught up in caring about what would happen to Demon, and I appreciated getting his view of his world.

Kingsolver reimagined Charles Dickens' DAVID COPPERFIELD to create this novel, and while I knew nothing specific about that story before reading, I could recognize the Dickensian nature of Demon's hardships, the colorful characters, and the occasional commentaries on social problems. It was interesting to read a summary of COPPERFIELD afterward to see how Kingsolver transposed the plot and people into modern Appalachia and used them to examine the region's poverty and the opioid crisis.

→ SLOW DANCE by Rainbow Rowell: When Shiloh attends the second wedding of one of her oldest friends, she's anxious about whether their other oldest friend will be there. Shiloh has been out of touch with Cary almost since they graduated from high school fifteen years ago, so on the one hand she's eager to see him. On the other hand, Shiloh has been married, had two kids, and divorced since then, and she isn't sure about being seen. Cary is at the wedding, and it's wonderful to reconnect, but also strange, because they have a lot of history together. A lot, and it's complicated. Everyone always thought the two of them were dating, though that wasn't what they were to each other, despite being inseparable. Now romantic possibilities are surfacing, but Shiloh has the kids and ex-husband, and Cary has a career in the Navy and is only back in Omaha briefly. So it's even more complicated, and it's definitely a lot.

This is a compelling novel about characters trying to bridge the gaps between each other, between imagined versions and reality, and between their teenage and adult selves. As I expect from a Rainbow Rowell book, the story is sweet and romantic at the same time it deals with emotional turmoil and difficult family situations. Also on brand: the characters have long, deep conversations as well as witty banter. At times, some of the angsting felt like too much to me, but I was happy to spend time with Shiloh and Cary and to watch their relationship develop.

→ THE BERRY PICKERS by Amanda Peters: Joe's whole life has been shaped by his sister Ruthie's disappearance when the two of them were young. She vanished in 1962 from the side of a road in Maine, where their family went every summer along with other Mi'kmaq Indians from Nova Scotia to work as blueberry pickers. Fifty years later, Joe is dying, surrounded by what's left of his family, his memories of the past, and the consequences of his life choices. Elsewhere, Norma is starting to make sense of a lifetime of confusing experiences, including childhood dreams of a different mother than the anxious, overbearing one she grew up with. Norma has always been aware that she's browner than her parents and that something doesn't add up in their story of a fire that destroyed all her baby pictures. But it takes fifty years for her to find the explanations she's long sought.

The end of the novel is clearly established at the beginning: Norma is Ruthie, and before Joe dies, she will find her way back to the family she was taken from. It makes sense not to withhold this information that would be easy to guess, but I was disappointed that by the middle of the book, almost every other piece of the story was already revealed, and I was losing interest. Though I felt for the characters, they never really came to life for me. Many other readers loved the story and the writing, but I wanted more from it.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Ed Yong offers a writing case study from his own work: "The start of any piece is known in journalism jargon as the lede. It should be a lure that entices readers and makes them want to read the rest of the story. It should be a trailer, which gives an accurate reflection of the content and tone to come. And it should be a flex, which demonstrates that the writer knows what they're doing. It's perhaps the single most important part of any piece of writing, and the part I spend the most time on. This paragraph took three fucking hours."

July Reading Recap

Now that I'm actually writing again, will my reading spree taper off? Time will tell!

→ MOONBOUND by Robin Sloan: After the Anth have solved all Earth's problems, humanity engineers a crew of beings, known as dragons, and sends them to explore the galaxy. The dragons return determined to prevent any further exploration by isolating Earth in a veil of moondust. The Anth fight back, but the dragons are invincible from their citadel on the moon, and the war is disastrous for humanity. (This is all explained in a four-page prologue.) Eleven thousand years later, a microscopic chronicler wakes up again. A young boy, Ariel, has just stumbled upon the preserved corpse that was the chronicler's previous host, and so this sentient "sourdough starter with a mech suit" leaps into Ariel's body and once again experiences the world. Earth has changed immeasurably, and mysteriously. Ariel lives in a small village dominated by a castle, as well as by a wizard who flies an airplane. Ariel has a handheld video game device and a dog that can talk. (All animals can talk.) The sky remains dust-shrouded, and soon Ariel and the chronicler will set out on an epic quest to revive the war against the dragons.

This novel is a weird and wonderful adventure that plays around with the conventions of genre, quests, chosen ones, and other classic tropes. While the story's patterns are familiar, little about it can be anticipated, and each new stage in the characters' journey brings fascinating surprises and extends the imaginative worldbuilding. MOONBOUND is quite different from Sloan's previous novels, but it has the same gentle humor and lovingly developed characters. (There are also some small references to his earlier books.) Sloan has planned this as the first book in a series, and I look forward to spending more time with these great characters and seeing other elements of the far-future Earth.

→ DIXON, DESCENDING by Karen Outen: Dixon has climbed serious mountains, but he never dreamed of attempting Everest until his brother Nate suggested it. The brothers have come into some money after their mother's death, and Nate's proposal is that they train together and then take a few months out of their lives to travel to Nepal and climb with a tour group. For Dixon, that means a semester off from the boys' middle school where he works as a psychologist, leaving his favorite kids, including one who is the target of relentless bullying. Still, Nate's dream of Everest becomes Dixon's as well, until he can't imagine not making the trip, and not reaching the summit, whatever the cost.

The novel begins on the mountain and sets up ominous foreshadowing before jumping back to establish what led the brothers there and what they've left behind. Careful shifts between time periods build up the tension as the story circles around the question of what happened. Outen did extensive research to portray the experience of climbing Everest, and her evocative writing captures both the majesty and the agony to be found on the mountain.

Dixon and Nate are Black, a rarity on the mountain that attracts some attention. Dixon's students are also young Black men, but they lack the privileges he grew up with, and his desire to help them doesn't always work out. In the portion of the book focused on the aftermath of the Everest expedition, there's an emotional story about Dixon and two of his students. While that plotline can't live up to the adventure and suspense of the Everest plot, it's well-crafted with high stakes of its own, and Outen ties the threads together in a satisfying ending. I recommend this, especially to others who share my horrified fascination with the idea of anyone climbing Everest.

→ PEOPLE COLLIDE by Isle McElroy: Eli and Elizabeth are an American couple living in Bulgaria, where she's earned a coveted fellowship. Eli is aware of being the less ambitious one, and he's hanging around with little to do while Elizabeth teaches and writes. Until one day, when Eli discovers that he's taken over Elizabeth's body. Once he reconciles himself to this strange situation, he assumes Elizabeth is in his own body, but she's nowhere to be found and isn't responding to calls. Because Eli can't explain the situation to anyone else, he has to pretend to be Elizabeth and act like Eli is the one who's disappeared. Soon a clue emerges to her possible whereabouts, and Eli is off on a search for his missing wife and his own missing body.

While the body swap is a familiar premise, McElroy bypasses most of the usual components, for good and bad. I had mixed feelings about this novel due mostly to imagining it would be a different sort of story. I was always eager to find out what would happen next, but I wasn't always as interested in where the author chose to take the story as in where I thought it might go. However, McElroy writes well, with excellent insight into the characters and relationships, and they use the premise to explore a range of ideas.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Charlie Jane Anders offers Another Way To Think About "Conflict" and "Stakes" In Your Fiction: "A lot of conflict is really about people dealing with all the weird programming that was crammed into their brains when they were younger, because most people have been indoctrinated with a ton of bad ideas about how the world works. I'm really interested in writing about the conflicts that take place within people. (In fact, one of the most interesting conflicts a character can have is the struggle to see past the toxic notion that life is about being aggressive, fighting, taking what you want, and so on.)"

Actually Writing

Since last week, I've been actually writing an actual draft of my current novel! I'd set myself a deadline to reach a stopping point on outlining and other planning, and move on to writing down the words and sentences of the story. I had to extend the target date by a couple of weeks (fortunately I'm on decent terms with my boss), but the deadline successfully moved this endeavor forward.

And it's been great! For a while now, I've had trouble staying focused on work for as much time as I intend, and I worried that writing was going to feel so much harder than planning and therefore even more difficult to stick with. But on the contrary, my writing sessions have kept me absorbed for hours in a row. I guess I do like writing after all, not merely having written.

It's still a slow process, and I'm only a few scenes in. There's some further planning I'm mixing in with the writing as I go, but I expect to keep inching along through the early section of the novel. Once I reach a certain point, I may need to stop writing for a little while and make decisions about some elements that remain vague. My hope is that figuring out these pieces will be easier with part of the story fleshed out.

Though I have all these open questions, I've mapped out the big picture of the entire novel. After two earlier drafts that were more like extended brainstorms, I'm glad to set off this time with confidence about where the story is going.

The outline is serving as a guide, but already in the course of turning plan into story, I've made small adjustments such as introducing details in a different order. With any luck, I'll avoid significant changes to the largest pieces, because the interlocking plotlines are carefully balanced, so one change could require many others. But I'm staying attentive to what makes sense for each scene and letting the story evolve within the framework of the high level plan.

And now, I'm eager to get back to writing!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Maris Kreizman at Literary Hub describes her experience contributing to the New York Times Best Books of the Century list: "First I tried to define 'best' in a way that felt right for me. I settled on the books that changed the way I viewed the world, or changed my idea of what a book can do or be. If you’re a real book lover you know that 10 slots to cover 24.5 years of books isn’t nearly enough to convey everything that's wonderful. So I created some of my own guidelines, namely that I wanted my list to be representative of what I, Maris Kreizman, read: mostly fiction, with some narrative nonfiction and essay writing thrown in."

June Reading Recap

I read some great, inventive, and varied novels last month!

→ THE OTHER VALLEY by Scott Alexander Howard: Odile is sixteen and friendless, and she rarely speaks to anyone at school. She doesn't seem a good candidate to vie for a competitive apprenticeship on the Conseil, but at her mother's insistence, she applies. The Conseil governs Odile's valley and makes decisions about the very small number of visits permitted to the neighboring valleys. In the valley to the west is a town identical to Odile's, exactly as every person and place existed twenty years earlier. To the east, life proceeds twenty years in the future. Visitations are only allowed in cases of extreme grief, so that loved ones may be viewed at a distance. These visits are carefully controlled because any interference could have consequences on the circumstances of future valleys. When Odile accidentally catches sight of a visiting group, the dangerous knowledge changes her prospects, leading to new friends and a chance at a spot on the Conseil.

I'm always excited to read a new twist on time travel, and I'm thrilled when the the resulting story is as good as this one. From the start, I felt immersed in Odile's world and invested in her friendships and career prospects. The tension of the novel comes as much from the subtle shifts in character dynamics as the looming speculative stakes. A plot that plays around with time needs an ending that's clever, logically consistent, and satisfying, and Howard delivers. Highly recommended for my fellow fans of time-bending stories.

→ THE HAZELBOURNE LADIES MOTORCYCLE AND FLYING CLUB by Helen Simonson: In 1919, as Britain recovers from the war and the influenza, new and old ways of life collide in the seaside town of Hazelbourne. Constance, who managed a grand estate during the war, has the qualifications for a career in bookkeeping, but employers want to hire returning soldiers and encourage her to become a governess or get married. Her new friend Poppy is wonderfully modern, riding a motorcycle and running a small business staffed by other lady riders, but Poppy's wealthy upbringing makes her outlook more traditional than she realizes, and she's cavalier about money in a way Constance can never be. Poppy's brother Harris lost a leg in the war and is haunted by all the other loss he witnessed, and since everyone is determined to view him as an invalid, he has little hope in ever finding work or love.

These characters and many more populate this novel that delightfully picks apart the class and social customs of the era while also addressing the numerous ways people suffered during and after World War I. As always, Simonson writes with a clever humor as well as thoughtful compassion. I loved getting to know the wonderful characters, and I was only sorry there were so many that some dropped out in the middle of the book before resurfacing when the many subplots came together at the end. The setting is well-developed, and I learned some pieces of history I hadn't known about. I remain an enthusiastic fan of Simonson's work, and I recommend all her novels.

→ THE EXTINCTION OF IRENA REY by Jennifer Croft: A group of eight devoted translators gather for a summit with "Our Author", the celebrated Polish novelist Irena Rey. They are meeting at her home on the edge of the Białowieża Forest to translate her latest masterpiece before it's revealed to the world, as they always do. But this summit is immediately unlike every previous one. Irena's dependable husband is absent without any explanation, so there's nobody providing meals or structuring the schedule. After a couple days of chaos, Irena disappears as well, and her only message is the completed manuscript. The translators are left searching for clues in the text, the house, and the village as their usual solidarity and their sense of purpose fracture.

This novel is funny, strange, and wonderfully meta. Translations don't happen at an author's house this way in reality, but Croft is well aware as an accomplished translator herself, and she has great fun with the premise she's created. The characters refer to each other by their languages rather than their names, and a note at the beginning establishes that the book we're reading was written by the character Spanish and translated by English, who provides disapproving footnotes throughout. The story becomes increasingly unhinged, and toward the end, I wished for things to come together a bit more clearly, but I was always entertained.

→ THE DEFAULT WORLD by Naomi Kanakia: Jhanvi has a stable job and a community of other trans women in Sacramento, where she'll eventually be able to save up the money she needs for expensive gender-affirming surgeries. But she's tired of waiting, and she's bored by Sacramento. Her old college friends in San Francisco are rich tech workers who spend their leisure time organizing sex parties, and though Jhanvi finds them shallow, she also envies their life. She goes to stay at their communal house with a bold scheme: to marry one of them and become eligible for the generous trans benefits their companies provide.

This is a great premise, and Jhanvi is a great character who is motivated by so many competing desires and constantly reckoning with those contradictions. As always, Kanakia demonstrates skill at teasing apart the complicated nuances of characters and their interactions. However, I thought this novel fell short of what it might have been with a clearer throughline and different pacing. The story often felt disjointed, without enough sense of the progression between events. There's a lot that's compelling in the book, but more that frustrated me.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Molly Templeton at Reactor wonders, Can a Book Really Be For Everyone?: "Listening to [Gabrielle] Zevin, I thought about what makes a book for everyone.... I mean the kind of book that can draw packs of teens, writers, parents, readers, and everyone else in a community into a theater on one rainy Thursday afternoon. Is it the presence of universal themes? Approachable prose? Intergenerational narratives? A certain sense of transparency, like you can see what the author is doing even as you appreciate it?"

May Reading Recap

Catching up on reviews of the books I read in May:

→ WANDERING STARS by Tommy Orange: Jude Star is a young boy, asleep in a tipi, when white men show up at his camp and gun down everyone he knows. Some years after surviving this massacre at Sand Creek, he's among the men rounded up and imprisoned on a charge of "countless crimes committed by Southern Cheyennes against the U.S. Army." While held captive, he's taught to dress and behave like the white men. He learns to read and write English and finds value in books and writing down stories. Later, he learns to drink alcohol and discovers the escape and agony in what becomes a problem habit. After Jude's story, the narrative shifts to the next generation of his family, continuing down the years to the present, when another young boy survives another massacre.

This novel focuses on one of the families from Orange's debut, THERE THERE, filling in their history and exploring what happens after the conclusion of the first book. I think you could read this new book without knowledge of the other, though you'll probably be curious to go back and learn about the previous events.

In my review of THERE THERE, I wrote "I would happily have read many more chapters about every character," and it was indeed great to get that opportunity for some of them. The portrayals are once again vivid and emotional, and I cared deeply about these characters. Orange weaves together their perspectives well to show how each deals with the same issues, including addiction, connection to heritage, and the desire to tell their own stories.

→ MEMORY PIECE by Lisa Ko begins as an 80s coming-of-age story that hints at the future of three friends who meet as kids. Giselle is drawn to performance art from a young age. After a childhood in New Jersey, she carves out a life in the New York City art world, creating pieces based in the medium of time. Jackie learns to code before most people have even used a computer. She joins the New York tech scene during the dot-com bubble and is caught between her job at an emerging internet behemoth and the passion project she runs on her own servers. Ellen turns to activism, fighting for squatters' rights as she moves into and rehabilitates a vacant building with a newfound community. Those friends become family for life, but her oldest friends Giselle and Jackie drift in and out of her orbit for decades.

I liked many pieces of this novel, but the whole was less effective for me than I hoped it would be. Ko writes beautifully and crafts fascinating characters and situations. The book's structure is unusual, more disjointed and experimental than I expected, and I wasn't sure what to make of all the choices. I most enjoyed reading about Jackie's experiences with the early internet, while Giselle's art and Ellen's experiences in a too-close-for-comfort dystopian future both unsettled me, in their own ways. This is an impressively different type of book than Ko's excellent debut, THE LEAVERS, and I'm curious to read whatever she writes next.

→ CRYING IN H MART by Michelle Zauner: Zauner was twenty-five when her mother died, just as the two of them were starting to appreciate each other as people and looking forward to being adults together. During Michelle's childhood and teen years, her relationship with her mother was often difficult, but the one thing they could connect over was food. Michelle grew up appreciating her mother's Korean cooking and their deeper explorations of the cuisine when they traveled from Oregon to Seoul to spend time with relatives back in her mother's homeland. In this memoir, food is a constant backdrop to recollections of their too-short time together and the account of illness, death, and grief.

Naturally, this book that focuses on a mother's death from cancer is frequently sad and covers painful topics, but the many joyful memories, especially around food, keep the story from getting too bleak. Throughout, Zauner does a good job of presenting her thoughts and emotions frankly. I'm not that drawn to memoirs, but this one kept me engaged, and also hungry! I'm lucky to live where plenty of Korean food is available, so I got to try out a number of the dishes that appear in the book.

→ REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES by Shelby Van Pelt: Marcellus is a giant Pacific octopus who has spent nearly all of his four-year lifespan captive in a tank. Tova is a 70-year-old human who cleans the aquarium at night. Ever since Tova's teenage son died 30 years ago, she's struggled to find a comfortable place among people, but she loves restoring order to the quiet aquarium, surrounded by the exhibits. When Tova finds Marcellus out of his tank one night, she realizes just how intelligent he is, and she even feels that he can understand her. Indeed, Marcellus prides himself on understanding humans better than they understand themselves. Meanwhile, far from the aquarium, a young man named Cameron is about to learn some information that will set him on a trajectory toward Marcellus and Tova, changing all their lives.

This is a sweet novel with a generally light-hearted tone, despite dealing with the subject of grief. Marcellus and Tova are wonderful characters, and I was disappointed when I realized the story was going to be mainly about how Tova and Cameron would connect, with Marcellus increasingly sidelined. But I did enjoy seeing how the human storylines were going to come together, though in the second half there was bit too much delaying of the inevitable. The colorful cast of supporting characters add extra quirkiness to this unique -- and very popular -- book.

→ BIG SWISS by Jen Beagin: Greta works as a transcriptionist, typing up the recorded sessions of a sex and relationship coach. She and the (not particularly effective) therapist live in the small town of Hudson, New York, so Greta is constantly running into people whose voices and secrets she recognizes from the recordings. She becomes fascinated by one client, nicknaming her "Big Swiss" and eagerly awaiting her next session. Big Swiss was once brutally attacked by a man who served time in prison and is about to be released. Big Swiss has also never had an orgasm. Inevitably, Greta encounters Big Swiss in real life and gets involved in both these situations.

Parts of this novel were a lot of fun and really made me laugh. Before I started reading, I expected a story that was mostly amusing if cringey, but it quickly became clear that plenty of disturbing and violent content was also in store. I was okay with that, though I still didn't anticipate how dark things would get (or how many insects would appear). I liked much of the book's weirdness but found some of it too rambling and unfocused, and the ending fell flat for me.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Jeff O'Neal, co-founder of Book Riot, reflects on how much of the company's success was a product of the internet landscape at the time: "Twitter and Facebook were growing and growing and there was not an algorithm in sight. If you followed Book Riot on Facebook, you would see everything that we posted. In order. Same for Twitter. One stat that I repeat often to show how different of a world it was: in early 2013, BookRiot.com averaged 14 visits per month per Facebook follower. So for every thousand Facebook followers, we could count on Facebook sending 14,000 visitors per month. Today, that number is closer to 1/10th of a visit per Facebook follower."

Releases I'm Ready For, Summer 2024

I've been planning out my summer reading and getting excited for these new books by some of my favorite authors:

→ THE HAZELBOURNE LADIES MOTORCYCLE AND FLYING CLUB by Helen Simonson (May 7): Simonson writes wonderful comedies of manners. MAJOR PETTIGREW'S LAST STAND is the charming story of two widowers falling in love despite the opinions of their small English village. In THE SUMMER BEFORE THE WAR, residents of a small English village are concerned with not only the activities of their residents, but also the start of World War I. This new novel is also historical, set just after the war in 1919, and it sounds like another delight.

→ THE DEFAULT WORLD by Naomi Kanakia (May 28): Kanakia has published three young adult novels (most recently, JUST HAPPY TO BE HERE) that all portray characters and situations with the complexity and nuance they deserve. I'm excited for her first novel with an adult rather than teen protagonist. The tagline, "A trans woman sets out to exploit a group of wealthy roommates," sounds like a wild ride, and the San Francisco tech world setting is an extra draw for me.

→ MOONBOUND by Robin Sloan (June 11): Speaking of the San Francisco tech world, that's the starting point for Sloan's MR. PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE and SOURDOUGH before each swerves off into a mysterious secretive society, one based around books and the other in food. I adored both and can't wait to see where Sloan is going in MOONBOUND, which takes place 13,000 years in the future. There's a companion website where he's posting material related to the book.

→ SLOW DANCE by Rainbow Rowell (July 23): I've read all of Rowell's novels, and I love the way she writes about the emotions of relationships between people with humor and heart. After almost a decade of publishing books about magical characters in the Simon Snow series, she's returning to a story of real world adults trying to figure out a relationship together.

→ SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A PARENT by S. Bear Bergman, illustrated by Saul Freedman-Lawson (July 30): The first collaboration between Bergman and Freedman-Lawson, SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A HUMAN, offers life advice that's as enjoyable to read and look at as it is useful. I'm willing to bet that even as a non-parent, I'll find guidance in this new book to incorporate into my life and relationships.

→ LOKA by S.B. Divya (August 13): Last year's MERU launched a space opera series with imaginative worldbuilding, great characters, and an exciting plot. I'm looking forward to continuing the interplanetary and genetic adventures in the next installment!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At CrimeReads, Micaiah Johnson explains how genre communicates a contract with the reader: "This understanding is why I write every single story as a murder mystery author, even though I do not strictly write murder mysteries. The murder mystery author's contract is neither kind nor cruel, but a kind of trickster middle. The murder mystery author gets to behave like an older sibling who is as bullying as they are loving: I will trick you, there will be death, but there will also be resolution. It is the antagonism of the horror writer, but in the form of a game. And, most importantly, it is a game the reader can win."

April Reading Recap

I had another great month of so much reading!

→ ANITA DE MONTE LAUGHS LAST by Xochitl Gonzalez: Anita de Monte and Jack Martin are married artists, both successful within their very different styles, but less successful at being married. Though they've always been drawn together, they are often violently at odds and think little of each other's work. Their years of shared passion and separate creativity end with Anita's shocking death in 1985. Less than 15 years later, Jack remains a giant in the art world, but Anita isn't even on the radar of art history student Raquel Toro as she prepares to embark on her senior thesis. Like Anita, Raquel forms a relationship with a more established artist who'd rather shape her to his tastes than appreciate who she is. As Raquel studies Jack's art, she closes in on the knowledge of Anita and all they have in common.

This is a fantastic, unpredictable novel about art, passion, and identity. The characters are wonderfully developed, sometimes infuriating, and all memorable. I was able to envision the artwork, and I liked the level of detail that filled out a whole art world around Anita and Jack. I also had a particular fondness for the details of Raquel's setting, since she attends Brown University at almost the same time I did. In the middle, I grew impatient for Raquel to hurry up and learn about Anita, but the suspense over this inevitability pays off, and all the story's pieces come together in such a satisfying way.

I didn't know until after reading that Anita's life, art, and death were closely based on a real artist, Ana Mendieta. Gonzalez discusses the inspiration in interviews, and Mendieta's family has also commented on the fictional portrayal.

→ VICTORY CITY by Salman Rushdie: When Pampa Kampana is a child, she is visited by a goddess who tells her she will plant a city and live more than two centuries to chronicle its rise and fall. That city, eventually named Bisnaga, grows from a bag of seeds in a matter of days, complete with fully grown citizens who only need Pampa to whisper their histories into their minds. A series of rulers transforms Bisnaga and extends the size of its empire, sometimes through negotiation, mostly through warfare. With Pampa's divinely extended lifespan, she is involved in every dynasty, serving as queen, advisor, or adversary. She records it all in an epic poem recounting Bisnaga's history, and she experiences the loneliness of watching everyone she loves grow old and die while she lives on.

Rushdie is a great storyteller, and this story kept me entertained, but I was less invested than I wanted to be. What created an emotional distance was the narrative's fairy tale quality: the archetypal characters, magically convenient solutions, and things happening in threes or according to other formulas. It's a deliberate style that's written well, and even if it didn't quite work for me, I remained curious about how events would unfold.

It turns out this is the second book in a row I read without realizing its basis in real historical events. Rushdie invented the magical parts, of course, but VICTORY CITY more or less tells the story of the Vijayanagara Empire that dominated southern India in the medieval period, with the names of the rulers, the dates of battles, and so on pulled right out of history.

→ JAMES by Percival Everett is the story of the runaway slave Jim from Mark Twain's THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. As in the original, after James flees to avoid being sold, he ends up traveling down the Mississippi with the boy Huck, who has always been, if not entirely kind, at least friendlier to him than the average white person. The ever-present threat of capture keeps James and Huck's journey perilous, and stealth and deception are often necessary. James is particularly skilled at deception, because survival in slavery depends on maintaining an intricate facade.

The first facade exposed in Everett's version is that every enslaved person is bilingual, putting on a thick, tortuous dialect in the presence of whites, and switching to a refined English among themselves. It's a delightful reveal, both funny and sharp, and Everett continues playing with this and other facets of language throughout the novel. The book delivers further surprises I won't spoil, all as skillfully managed.

I reread HUCK FINN in preparation for this new release, and that was interesting but definitely not required. Parts of JAMES follow the source material, but not all, and that's a solid choice given how constrained Jim's activity is for much of Twain's novel. Everett provides James with a more varied set of constraints, enriching and elevating his story. This is a fascinating reimagining, highly recommended.

→ SEEK YOU: A JOURNEY THROUGH AMERICAN LONELINESS by Kristen Radtke: In this work of graphic nonfiction, Radtke grapples with loneliness by writing and drawing about both her personal experience and the wider phenomenon of societal isolation. The text moves between a range of topics, including scientific studies and aspects of media history, tying these together with scenes from Radtke's own life and forming connections. The illustrations have a unified style but also cover a range of subject matter, sometimes depicting people in realistic settings, other times imaginatively evoking a feeling, and frequently reproducing news headlines and other documents.

I found the book's material interesting and the art visually appealing. The content is thought-provoking and educated me about subjects both entertaining (laugh tracks, professional cuddlers) and disturbing (psychologist Harry Harlow's monkey studies). At times, I thought the text switched too quickly between topics or fell short of reaching an intended conclusion. My bigger complaint is a number of missed opportunities where the illustrations might have done something that text couldn't, by showing what was being described or using sequential images for more impact.

→ WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING by Delia Owens: In 1952, Kya is six years old and left to more or less fend for herself in a shack in the marshes of the North Carolina coast. In 1969, in the nearest town, local big shot Chase Andrews is found dead, possibly murdered. Kya is still living a hermit-like existence in the marsh, and at first she's suspected only for her outcast status, but then because her past history with Chase comes to light. The first half of the book is mostly episodes from Kya's childhood showing how she survives, often with only birds for company, interspersed with occasional short chapters about the murder investigation. In the second half, events preceding and following the murder take prominence.

I'm baffled that this unremarkable novel has been a runaway bestseller. The book's strength is the descriptive passages that evoke the natural setting of the marsh Kya loves. Nothing else stood out to me. I was moderately (but only moderately) interested in the story during the first section, and then gradually less so as the book neared its underwhelming conclusion. I found the plot lacking, and the dialogue flat and unconvincing. Millions of readers love this book, but it did little for me.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Scottie Andrew at CNN profiles author Lauren Groff's new bookstore, The Lynx in Gainesville, Florida: "Groff understands Florida, in all of its confounding and infuriating glory. She knows that the things that live here are hard to conquer. 'What we want to do is create a lighthouse so that, nationally, people know that Florida is not full of closed-minded people,' Groff says. 'So that they know that there are places here that love and welcome transgender people, people who want to learn about Black history, people who want to pay homage to what actually happened, even if it makes us feel bad.'"

Same Old Story

Obviously I'm a sucker for any essay headline promising the narrative of a novelist who spent a decade working on a book, or who rewrote their novel a dozen times, or who tried to sell five different finished manuscripts before finally getting a publishing deal. I've linked to many such essays in this blog over the years, and I've read countless more.

This is a frequently told sort of story because it's a common experience. Probably more published novelists could recount some version of that essay than the number of authors who published their first attempt at a novel after only a draft or two in a year or two. Novels involve a great big hunk of ideas and words to imagine, reimagine, write, and rewrite. Generally even if some of those stages go quickly, others require a lot more time.

Today I read the latest iteration of the essay to appear in Literary Hub, where I often encounter these. "The Pilgrim's (Lack of) Progress, Or, Sorry I Took So Long to Finish My Novel, Or, On the Value of Restarting" is the headline for Justin Taylor's account of writing REBOOT (which used to have even more subtitles than the essay). He explains:

Depending how you reckon, writing it either took me nine years or it took me a month.

I started it on New Year's Day 2014 and the first thing I did was write longhand for a week. The second thing I did was fail for seven years. I don't mean that I spent seven years trying to complete a draft. There were plenty of drafts. I mean that I spent seven years trying to make work something that would not work, that I felt increasingly certain could not work, and yet found myself revising and restarting time and again, always in a state of perfect hopelessness except for when I came to my senses and abandoned the project once and for all, which I did at least once a year.

When Taylor eventually writes the draft that works,

...the only way I could allow myself another attempt was to first make a rule that I would not revisit any of the old material. Drafts, outlines, character descriptions, the handful of passages I thought were good: all off-limits. I would not even peek at them to refresh my memory of what they contained. I had to start from absolute zero—a hard reboot, if you will—and anything that survived from those prior drafts would be there not because I'd salvaged it, but because I'd created it from scratch all over again.

I finished the first successful draft of the novel on April 3, 2021, twenty-eight days after I started. Though there would be another year of revision before I sold it (year eight), and then a year of working with the editors who bought it (year nine), the novel was basically done.

I found much about this identifiable, though my version of the experience follows a different sequence of steps. Most crucially, I haven't yet achieved that decisive story beat, the publication of the novel that occasions the publication of an essay about the arduous journey that's now in the past.

The scale of the journey has been on my mind as I turned another year older this month. When described in hindsight, a long road to publication seems impressive, even mythic. But in the middle, well, it's not a story until it gets an ending.

March Reading Recap

I've still been doing a lot of reading, which means I haven't been doing so much writing, but I sure have been doing a lot of reading.

→ SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND by Jennine Capó Crucet: Ismael Reyes (call him Izzy) is twenty years old, and so far his only ambition in life has been to capitalize on his resemblance to the singer Pitbull and make some easy money as a celebrity impersonator. After a cease and desist letter puts a stop to that, Izzy comes up with a plan to model himself after another Miami-associated personality, Tony Montana from the movie Scarface. Izzy figures that all he needs is a sidekick, some shady dudes who can hook them up with shady work, a girl, and maybe an exotic animal, and soon he'll be rich and powerful. As it happens, an exotic animal in Izzy's vicinity is aware of his scheme: The orca Lolita has spent decades confined to a too-small tank at the Miami Seaquarium, but her senses range much farther. Lolita observes Izzy and even infiltrates his thoughts as he seeks out the pieces of his plan. The search leads Izzy into questions he's long suppressed about the circumstances of his childhood journey to Miami on a raft from Cuba, questions that return him to dangerous waters.

I would not have been drawn to this book if not for my admiration of Crucet's previous novel, but I'm so glad I read it. This is a weird, audacious story, often hilarious and sometimes horrifying. Izzy is well-developed as a basically sweet kid who is completely out of his depth in striving to become a gangster. Lolita is an even more fascinating protagonist, and all her biographical details are taken directly from real life. Through omniscient narration, Crucet moves between their perspectives and those of other characters, while also commenting on Miami culture, history, and climate change. And don't worry if, like me, you know nothing about Scarface, because Crucet provides all the necessary context -- and said in an NPR interview that her goal was for people to "read this book and then never have to actually watch it."

→ FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS by Ursula K. Le Guin: The four stories in this collection are closely linked, and all take place on the planets Werel and Yeowe, which are also closely linked. On Werel, a system of slavery dominated society for thousands of years, and Werelians brought that system to the previously uninhabited Yeowe, where variations emerged. Finally, uprisings lead to decades of revolution and eventual liberation on both planets. During that turbulent period, Werel and Yeowe also begin accepting envoys from the Ekumen, the consortium of worlds that appears in much of Le Guin's fiction. Each of these stories shows some aspect of the transition to liberation, by focusing on a variety of characters from different places, with different societal positions.

I really liked getting to know all these characters while gradually learning more about the larger story of their worlds. Throughout the book, Le Guin is doing what she does best: imagining complex, plausible cultures and bringing them to life through specific character experiences. As the book's title suggests, forgiveness plays a role in every story. So does love, and characters from vastly different circumstances coming to understand each other is a recurring theme. I recommend this to any Le Guin fan, and I think it could serve as an introduction to her work.

→ GET IN TROUBLE by Kelly Link: I've often heard Kelly Link and her work referenced, but I don't think I'd read any of her stories before picking up this collection. The first story, "The Summer People", provides a good introduction to Link's style, because it starts with a character who is preoccupied by real-world concerns (illness, bad parenting, work), and the reader gradually comes to understand that she's also dealing with something weird and supernatural. Most of the stories similarly blend familiar situations, especially involving relationships between characters, with speculative elements of some kind. I enjoy this combination in general, and I liked Link's approach, though I sometimes wanted more exploration of the speculative parts, and several endings left me puzzled or disappointed.

Two of my favorites in the collection are both set in a world where superheroes are common. In "Secret Identity", a teenager travels to New York City to meet up with the man she's in an online relationship with. The way the story cleverly unfolds, first the reader has to figure out what's going on, and then the main character does. "Origin Story" is about a meeting of old friends, one of whom happens to be a famous superhero. In both stories, as in the collection overall, the character relationships are well-developed and specific, and there's a bit of humor as well as some real emotion. The most emotionally affecting story is also the most grounded in reality: "The Lesson", focusing on the tension in a couple's relationship as they attend a wedding while waiting for their surrogate to give birth to their child.

→ KINNING by Nisi Shawl: In the wake of the early twentieth century's Great War, a group of revolutionaries aim to prevent future conflicts by spreading peace and empathy. Their method is the fungus-based Spirit Medicine that creates bonds between fellow inoculants, who become able to sense each other's emotions and even communicate telepathically. The sister and brother scientists, Bee-Lung and Tink, along with the rest of the crew of their aircanoe, are on a mission to distribute the Spirit Medicine in their travels across Asia and Africa. Meanwhile, another sister and brother, the royal children Mwadi and Ilunga of Everfair, are vying to inherit the throne when their father abdicates. Their stories and those of many other characters converge over questions of Everfair's future, and then become further entwined through Spirit Medicine.

This sequel to EVERFAIR brings back many of its characters, but the story has a different focus and scope than the decades-long nation-building of the original, and it's not particularly important to know what happened before. Though I was curious to return to the story world, this book's plot didn't interest me nearly as much as the first. The idea of an empathy-spreading fungus is intriguing, but I didn't care for the way it played out. The characters spend a lot of time being caught up in sensuality that I wasn't feeling, and the mechanics of strains and cores eventually become tedious. While this wasn't for me, I applaud the originality of the concepts, and I hope the story finds the right readers.

→ THE THREAD COLLECTORS by Shaunna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman follows two couples separated during the Civil War, one Black, one white and Jewish. When William flees out of slavery to join the Union Army, he leaves Stella behind in New Orleans. While he keeps up the spirits of his fellow soldiers by playing his flute, she embroiders handkerchiefs with maps to help more men in their escapes. At the military camp, William befriends a fellow musician, Jacob, who writes letters recounting their experiences to his beloved wife Lily. She's back home in New York City, where she organizes women in sewing quilts and making bandages to aid the troops and further the abolitionist movement.

This novel offers a lot of historical detail, but I didn't get much else out of it. In writing the book, the authors set out to "explore the Civil War experience through two underrepresented lenses" (Black and Jewish), and I was often conscious of that motive rather than transported into these experiences by the story. The characters rarely felt like real, complex people living the events from within their era. Despite that, the four characters' stories move along well enough, if a bit unevenly. Though the two women and their sewing are highlighted by the title, cover, and description, this is as much or more a story about the men, and what little impact the sewing has on the plot seems forced. William and Jacob's shared love of music, and the friendship that grows from it, is more effectively portrayed and might have been a better source for the title.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At the New York Times, Anna Holmes celebrates the 100th year of The Boxcar Children: "But the food in 'The Boxcar Children' is so central, so memorable. For the Alden children the days and hours are marked not by school lessons or play dates but by meals and the position of the sun. Bread is 'fragrant,' with 'crusty ends.' Cheese in wax paper is 'golden.' Early in the book, Jessie, a 'little housekeeper' in line with the gender roles of the time, devises a makeshift refrigerator: a small pool of water in which she stores milk ('cold as ice') and butter ('cool and sweet')."

February Reading Recap

When I'm not busy figuring out character arcs, I've been reading away:

→ COME AND GET IT by Kiley Reid takes place mostly inside a dormitory at the University of Arkansas. Millie is one of the resident assistants for the dorm, and she's good at it. Even when students make clueless comments about race or class, Millie keeps up her facade of perky responsibility and patiently smooths over conflicts between residents, like the three roommates in the suite next door. A couple of her fellow RAs are much less invested in the job, and as Millie's friendship with them grows, she adopts some of their slacker ways and cares less about doing everything by the book. Agatha is a visiting professor who first connects with Millie for help setting up interviews for Agatha's next book about attitudes toward money. The interviews provide such great material that Agatha talks to Millie about spending more time in the dorm to observe students informally -- in other words, to eavesdrop. What begins as a harmless arrangement develops layers of complications over time to threaten consequences for everyone involved.

This story is all about people listening in on what other people say and how they say it, and the reading experience constantly delivers the juicy thrill of eavesdropping on an outrageous conversation. Much of the novel is seemingly unimportant discussions that go on surprisingly long, and I expect some readers will find it slow, but I remained entertained by everything the characters had to say. Reid demonstrates her skill at rendering realistic dialogue for characters of all backgrounds once again, as she did in the faster-moving SUCH A FUN AGE. Though it takes time for the plot of COME AND GET IT to really get moving, Reid sets the characters on their eventual trajectories from the start and uses tiny moments to build up an intricate plot. I loved how nuanced and quietly complex the story is, and I really admire Reid's craft.

→ THE BEE STING by Paul Murray: The Barnes family is under financial strain because of the global recession, and that's pushing every family member into situations they don't want tell the others about. Teen daughter Cass worries her best friendship will end if a class divide grows between the two girls, and she becomes increasingly desperate not to lose the relationship. (Increasing desperation eventually drives all the characters.) Her younger brother PJ has his own friendship issues, but the boy he met on a gaming forum is the one person who seems to be on his side, and may have a solution to all his family's problems. Their parents, Imelda and Dickie, are overwhelmed with concerns of an adult nature, complicated by a past that's far darker than their children realize.

I'm always interested in stories about family secrets, and this one is well constructed, unfolding to reveal more and more surprises. I liked how even though these characters interact daily and are all impacted by the failing family business, each is largely occupied with a plot the others are completely unaware of. Those separate plots are set up in a section for each character before the perspectives interleave in the final section. The structure allows time to really sink into the distinct points of view, but because the parents' sections are quite long, I got impatient waiting for an update on the kids' stories. Though I wasn't sorry to read 650 pages of this book, I think it could have been shorter.

I'm glad I read this, but it won't be for everyone. Along with warning about the length, I'll mention that one POV is written without any periods or commas, every character makes terrible decisions, and the story gets disturbing in numerous ways. If none of that scares you away, you might also be a reader who will appreciate THE BEE STING.

→ HOLLOWPOX: THE HUNT FOR MORRIGAN CROW by Jessica Townsend: After a difficult first year as a junior scholar in the Wundrous Society, Morrigan Crow is excited to finally begin her magical education in earnest. Her new set of classes is strange and thrilling, and she's so caught up in learning and practicing that she barely has attention for anything else. Still, Morrigan can't ignore the increasing number of disturbing incidents involving Wunimals. These sentient creatures, who normally behave like any other member of Nevermoor society, have started attacking humans in the manner of senseless beasts. While a disease is suspected, even the Wunsoc can't figure out how to stop it, and fear and prejudice is spreading. Morrigan is just a kid, so the adults don't want her trying to find a solution, but she may be in a unique position to help.

I'm continuing to enjoy this series, and how with each new book, we're learning along with Morrigan that there's more to Nevermoor and Wunsoc than was apparent before. The suspense is high in this installment, and the story goes to some tough places and covers them thoughtfully. Morrigan's friendships keep developing in great ways, with this book particularly focused on the idea of found family. I look forward to the gang's next adventures, so I'm joining the wait for the fourth book, expected later this year.

→ UNLOCKING THE AIR AND OTHER STORIES by Ursula K. Le Guin: For this collection, Le Guin compiled her stories from the 1980s and 90s that aren't science fiction. I didn't realize that when I checked it out from the library, but I was glad for the opportunity to read a different side of her work. Unfortunately, I wasn't that taken with most of the stories. I don't want to pin my disappointment on the lack of scifi, because I'm happy to read realistic fiction, and many of these stories aren't entirely grounded in reality anyway. But my sense after reading them was usually that something was lacking, either in the follow-through of an intriguing setup or in my understanding of the point. The writing is great at a sentence and paragraph level, of course, and Le Guin develops some good characters and relationships, but I wanted more from these stories.

The opener, "Half Past Four", was one of the most interesting to read: In each scene, a set of recurring characters are remixed into different versions of lives and relationships to one another. I enjoyed figuring out all the pieces of each iteration, but the ending left me feeling like I didn't get it, a recurring experience with this collection. The most effective story for me was "Standing Ground", which depicts a tense situation at an abortion clinic from different points of view, though I was also confused by the abruptness of that ending. "Ether, OR" is about the relationships between residents of a small town that doesn't remain in a fixed location. The characters are strong, and the premise is a fascinating one, but I was surprised it mostly provides background flavor more than it impacts the events.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Andrea Blythe considers the importance of food in storytelling, on the page, on screen, and in games such as Pentiment: "Some of the most interesting moments in the gameplay is when Andreas joins one of the local families for a meal. The act of sitting down for lunch or dinner plays several important roles in the game, including marking the passage of time by moving the day forward. It also reveals a significant amount of information about the family and their social class, as well as being a space for discussion, local gossip, and family arguments. It also allows us to see what kinds of foods were eaten during that time period in Bavaria, enabling the player to feel more connected to this historical moment."

Arc-itecture

I've been thinking a lot about character arcs this month. Despite the amount of time I've already spent planning and attempting drafts of the current novel, I realized I didn't have a clear enough sense of what should be driving and changing the characters over the course of the story. Sure, I'd set up events in the world for characters to respond to and conflicts to develop between them, but I couldn't make the pieces of the plot fit together in a satisfying way. One big reason was that I'd never worked out all the details of what's behind the characters' goals, how those motivations evolve during the story, and the consequences for the ending.

I have traditionally considered myself to be good at characters and bad at plot. But "Character is plot, plot is character," as F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have said. What comes most naturally to me as a writer is inventing people who have complicated personalities and relationships and backstories, just like real people. The challenging part is making them also like fictional people, who have a compelling reason to participate in a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Given how much of that beginning, middle, and end I'd already constructed before tackling that part, it seems my weakness isn't so much plot as the character-plot intersection, the character arc.

So I've been refreshing my memory of the principles of character development and plot structure. It might sound artificial to reduce a complex character to a formula of goals and motivations, or corny to frame everyone as pursuing an acknowledged want while truly seeking an unrecognized need. But these pieces of writing advice get repeated over and over because they describe common features of many succesful stories, and I find them useful blueprints to reference.

An entire novel is large and ungainly, and I like using techniques that let me see the big picture by turning it into something small, such as a few sentences that remind me what's important to each character. Readers will eventually get something so much more elaborate and interesting than those sentences, but having those at the heart of the story gives me confidence that the structure is solid.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ In a wide-ranging essay, Matthew Salesses questions the Possibilities of Climate Fiction: "I can think of several norms we have in America for contemporary fiction that might get in the way of our ability to story (and therefore comprehend) hyperobjects, especially those that have to do with agency and the project of the individual, such as a character-driven plot (internal causation over external causation). It should be clear right away how a focus on the individual might make it difficult to handle massively distributed objects that no individual is personally responsible for yet whose consequences every individual must deal with."